Burnaway

[cont.]
“Right now, the idea of Dennis committing adultery feels so trivial, but the truth is it would have depended upon when. If he had an affair while I was changing diapers, I would have destroyed him in every way possible. But later, after spending years together, I tend to think I could have forgiven him for a one-nighter, especially if he had Rohypnol in his system. A prolonged affair, that would have been very hard to forgive.”
“Do you think he did have affairs?”
“I don’t think so. Anybody who sneaks around is selfish and emotionally lazy. They need conquests to make themselves feel alive and important. It’s all about them and their needs, their fantasies, to hell with anybody else. Dennis was not selfish or insecure and we enjoyed each other’s company. We were best friends. He was always so tender, so eager with me. And he also kept so busy at work, when would he find the time? I might be wrong but he seemed genuinely content to me. Didn’t he seem that way to you?”
“Yeah. He did. For someone who worked around the dying, he was an amazingly happy man. That laugh of his was always infectious. Like when we were watching the movie about the talking billboard and he started adlibbing dialogue and you started adlibbing back. The two of you came up with lines that were so much better than the movie’s. I thought I was going to wet my pants because y’all got me laughing so hard. But was it always that way? Didn’t he ever give you a reason to get jealous?”
“Once. We went to a party given for the clinic when he first joined it. That was the first night I had hired a babysitter so I was nervous. While I was sipping a cocktail, a particularly beautiful anesthesiologist flirted up a storm with him and he flirted right back. I got really upset when they disappeared together.”
“What did you do?”
“I found them talking in the kitchen, walked in smiling and told him his baby son needed him at home.”
“Was that it? Didn’t you bless him out later?”
“In a way. I simply reminded him I had learned how to castrate bulls on my grandpa’s farm.”
“I’m sure he appreciated the warning. And you. Were you ever tempted?”
“Of course I was. Just because I was married didn’t mean I was dead. Life presents options and you make your choices. Dennis was always my first choice. I cared about him too much to hurt him for a moment of passing pleasure.” Just talking about him made her voice choke up.
Odessa pulled up in front of a fire hydrant a few car lengths down from the posh apartment building where Maggie and Barbara lived. Finding legal parking on the street was almost impossible and Odessa didn’t want to go through the rigmarole of valet parking. Maggie didn’t get out, so they sat there a while with the engine idling.
“Barbara flirts and it bothers me.”
“You have a new relationship, and it will take time to set up the ground rules.”
“Barbara doesn’t want rules.”
“Ah.”
“I told her that she hated her father because he ran around on her mother. Why would she even want to pretend to behave the same way? And she told me it was my fault because I didn’t like to party every night with her.”
They sat there a bit longer. The way Maggie folded her hands, the way she frowned reminded her so much of Dennis that Odessa had to bite her lip to stop the tears from forming.
“Barbara told me I wasn’t her boss and then stormed out. I haven’t heard from her all day.”
“Heat passes. The only advice I have is to remember that Emily Dickinson poem.”
“’A word is dead when it is said. Some say. I say it just begins to live that day.’”
“Exactly.” Dennis had taught her that poem.
“Did you and Dennis ever fight?”
“If you are asking if we screamed and threw things and stormed out, no. That wasn’t our style. At one point, we did have quite a set of disagreements and some became pretty loud. It was when we first moved to LA and Dennis got it in his head he could stop talking to me. He decided he could do whatever he wanted to do. He decided all on his own to join the group starting up the clinic. I would have agreed with the decision but he didn’t confer with me. And he went out and bought a sports car. No one with an active toddler should have a sports car.”